The language of co-existence

During our short foray into the settlement, rifle practice was underway on the Beit El firing range, puffs of sand filling the air around the human-shaped targets. The hostility to the goings on in Ramallah was clear, articulated at every level, from one shop owner who complained, "Nothing good is happening now, everything is bad," to the road sign opposite the settlement (left), which had the Arabic town names painted out.

Israeli Labour Party politician Abba Eban stated, while addressing the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee in late 1988, that the juxtaposition of two peoples on the soil of Eretz Israel was "a 100% recipe for violence."

The Intifada is sometimes cited by Israelis as an example of Palestinian violence if you try to raise the issue of Israeli settler violence against Palestinians.

In fact, many serious acts of violence perpetrated by settlers against Palestinians took place before the Intifada began in 1987. A 1985 report by the Palestinian Human Rights Campaign summarised incidents of settler violence in the years 1980-1984, long before the Intifada: